- Email: [email protected]
Being digital
narrowly? Is it really “acquisitions” for we should be educating librarians or something broader, called “collection development,” which includes acquisitions, but goes beyond it? One assumes that a paper about the latter topic would take note, at least, of Peggy Johnson and Sheila S. Intner’s Recruiting, Educating, and Training Librarians for Collection Development (Greenwood, 1994) with five chapters probing course definition, curriculum issues, the value of practicums, and other educational questions. In particular, Thomas E. Nisonger’s chapter exploring separate or combined courses for acquisitions and collection development is directly relevant. Edited books generally tend to be viewed by suspicion by parsimonious librarians, and one as costly as this must prove its worth beyond the shadow of a doubt. The suspicion is based on the view that chapters written by different authors will not hang together coherently or be of consistent quality. In terms of topical focus, this book rambles and the authors take very different approaches to their material. But the quality of the writing is consistently good and current interest in all of the material is strong, making the book worthy of consideration for purchase, at least by large academic libraries that feel an obligation to provide professional literature for staff development.-Sheila S. Intner, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, 300 the Fenway, Boston, MA 021155898. Advances in Library Administration & Organization, Vol. 11, edited by Gerald B. McCabe & Bernard Kreissman. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press Inc., 1993. 329~. $73.25. ISBN l55938-596-O. Of the 13 chapters, only Miriam Drake’s “Libraries, Technology and Quality” will grab and hold a reader’s attention. Her succinct argument for quality, people-centered services, especially library services, in a time of explosive technological advance is a gem embedded in otherwise generally low-grade ore. Two chapters by Steven M. Hutton are, for the most part, readable and interesting, but out of scope. “National Technical Information: The Red October Problem” is a good summary of the history and taxonomy of classification systems used to safeguard information deemed vital to U.S. interests. However, it wanders into a discussion of privatization of mechanisms for the dissemination of government information and offers no conclusions other than the intuitively obvious one that tension between U.S. national security interests and the national interest for access to information will continue. His other chapter is essentially an anthropo-historical overview of occupational specialization. The remaining 10 chapters make no significant contribution to the literature of librarianship. “Examining Innovative Applications of Technology in Libraries,” for instance, is merely a laundry list of once “innovative projects at 13 institutions described as “an impressionistic study [with] some repetition . to allow the reader to focus on specific issues without reading the entire report.” The result is daunting, excruciating, and mind-numbing. The volume would have profited from better copyediting, for example, the use of “reticent” for “reluctant” (p. 120) and “department for development” (p. 214). Such a comment is, however, gratuitous in this case, and tantamount to suggesting that the Titanic might have been saved by rearranging the deck
498
The Journal
of Academic
Librarianship
furniture.-Dennis W. Dickinson, College Librarian, College, 731 College St., Beloit, WI 53511-5509.
Beloit
Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte. New York: Kuopf, 1995. 243~. $23.00. ISBN O-679-439 19-6. LC 94-4597 1. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, by Clifford Stoll. New York: Doubleday, 1995. 247~. $22.00. ISBN O-385-41993-7. LC 95-2537. Two experts on electronic technology and the information highway take rather different positions on how our futures, especially the ways that we work, read, and interact, will be influenced by living in a digitized society. “Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living,” claims Negroponte, who is Director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a member of the MIT faculty since 1968, he has firsthand knowledge about the development of many electronic products. His view of the changes can be summarized in one sentence: “The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable” (p. 4). He characterizes bits as the DNA of information and claims that the information superhighway is the global movement of weightless bits traveling at the speed of light. Books and journals, by contrast, are composed of atoms. His thesis is that the atoms carried in those containers will be replaced by bits which are weightless and can travel at the speed of light. Negroponte envisions computers capable of recognizing their “masters,” learning their individual needs, understanding their verbal commands and sensing their nonverbal presence. Indeed, voice activated computers, albeit primitive versions, are already on the market. He predicts that agents, sometimes called knowbots, will screen out unwanted messages from e-mail and listservs, and that household appliances will have the ability to respond automatically to changing circumstances. And, of course, books as such will be unnecessary because “multimedia someday will be as subtle and rich as the feel of paper and smell of leather” (p. 71). Stoll has strong reservations about the benefits of computer networks. Networks, he maintains, “isolate us from one another and cheapen the meaning of actual experience. They work against literacy and creativity. They will undercut schools and libraries” (p. 3). Stoll is no computerphobe; he tracked and caught a spy ring operating on the Internet which sold information to the KGB, an experience that he describes in The CuckooS Egg (Doubleday, 1989). Stoll considers most predictions about the future wonders of the information highway as pure hype, especially those concerning electronic libraries. He says that the cost to digitizeeven by scanning-the millions of pages already in print is prohibitive. He cautions that rapidly changing technology will make many of today’s electronic sources obsolete because the parts to repair the equipment on which they run will be unavailable. (Remember 8-track tape?) The major difference between these two computer experts is the role that printed sources have played in their lives. Stoll admits that he frequents libraries and likes to read old magazines. However, he fears that librarians are sowing the seed of their own destruction by virtue of their fascination with the Internet. In his opinion, chasing ever changing technology costs money that could be better spent on books and magazines. Clearly, Stoll is a bibliophile. Just as clearly, Negroponte is not: the first sentence of his book is “Being dyslexic, I don’t like to
read” (p. 3). Only time will tell whose view will prevail.-Ellen Altman, School of Library and Information Science, Uni-
versity of Arizona, 1515 E. First St., ‘I&son, AZ 85219. Censorship of Expression in the 1980s: A Statistical Survey, by John B. Harer & Steven R. Harris. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994. 181~. $49.95. ISBN O313-28746-5. (Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications, No. 45). Referring to the 1980s as “the decade of the attack on Judy Blume,” Harer, head of circulation at Texas A&M University library, and Harris, humanities reference librarian at Louisiana State University library, have studied censorship challenges and complaints over a 1O-year period, 198 1- 1990, as reported in four different reporting sources-the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, the Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, Censorship News, and the Student Press Law Center Report. The book is not, as the authors acknowledge, a purely scientific study, but it does have the quality of evaluative quasidesign research. Ten questions were identified nine of which are similar to those investigated by Woods in A Decade of Censorship in America (Scarecrow Press, 1979). A tenth question sought to determine who the people were who stood up to the challenges. The study also differs from Woods’ in that it did not limit itself to educational institutions. Retail outlets, theaters, churches, radio stations, and the like were also included. While the period covered ( 198 1- 1990) overlaps with the other major compilation of censorship statistics, Burress’s Battle of the Books (Scarecrow Press, 1989), there are far fewer similarities in methodology, data analysis, and presentation of results. Harer and Harris found that the 1980s approximated the same level of censorship as that reported by Woods, and while some of the findings were comparable significant differences emerged. During the 1980s the most censored of all materials was Playboy magazine; the most censored book was Deenie by Judy Blume. Books remained the most challenged format, with the year 198 1 experiencing the greatest number of challenges. Censorship was the most prevalent in the farm-belt Midwestern states and the Pacific Northwest. High schools and high school librarians remained the main targets of attack, with bookstores and department stores being the most frequently targeted noneducational institutions. Parents continue to be the principal complainants, and sexual content still caused the most difficulty. A censorship challenge was more likely to result in banning or restricting access than the opposite. Teachers turned out to be the most likely advocates of banning or restricting. The ACLU was the most active national organization to which people could turn for help. Unlike such books, of which there are many, as Censorship and First Amendment Rights (American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, 1992), which offers advice on handling challenges, identifies national organizations concerned with combatting censorship, and suggests how to deal with lawyers, lobbyists, and public offtcials, Censorship ofExpression in the 1980s limits itself to reporting findings. The authors do not attempt the construction of operational propositions. The study represents an impressive demonstration of analytical techniques. The text is woven around 26 tables and 17 figures; bibliographical items, though few, are carefully selected. The index is fairly adequate. The really important chaptersthose in which the date are presented-are excellent.
One wishes, though, that some hard-boiled copy editor had go hold of the manuscript beforehand to eliminate large chunks of sometimes tedious methodological discussions, and curb the authors’ tendency to make statements and then go off on tangents. Certainly, though, any academic libraries concerned with intellectual freedom issues should own the volume. Just as Woods and Burress have become standards reference works, the present volume can confidently expect to have a similarly useful lifespan. Overall, its purpose has been achieved.-A.J.
Anderson, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115. The Challenge and Practice of Academic Accreditation: A Sourcebook for Library Administrators, edited by Edward D. Garten. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.285~. $65.00. ISBN O-313-28897-6. LC 94-2190 (The Greenwood Library Management Collection). This collection of essays and compilation of accreditation criteria serves a number of worthwhile purposes. It provides sound, dispassionate descriptions of the protocols and procedures of accreditation, and offers advice to librarians on how to engage the process rewardingly. Beyond this, it illuminates the context and nature of the controversies in which accreditation is currently enmeshed, provides spirited critiques of accreditation criteria and the manner in which they are applied, and reflects and describes the currently dominant paradigm of outcomes assessment with which the accreditation community is responding to its critics. Essays by Edward Garten, Susanne Frankie, and Joan Worley on the practicalities of the self-study and site visit are essential reading for librarians approaching accreditation for the first time. Even seasoned veterans are likely to find they offer rewarding insights and suggestions. Additional audiences for these fine, experience-based essays include members of the site-visitation teams and administrators-whether librarians or not-who steer their institutions’ preparations for accreditation. The book also offers a compiling of the criteria by which academic libraries are judged, not only by the regional accrediting bodies, but a host of professional and disciplinary associations as well. This is a formidable massing of succinct prose related to library assessment which can serve the library administrator in a number of applications, from preparing for approval by a particular organization to formulating internal assessment programs. Commentary and elucidating comparisons add value to the compilation. Alongside these practical features are essays which question the adequacy of accreditation methods in responding to today’s information technology and student demographics, and which illustrate the criticisms and self-doubts currently racking regional accreditation. These vary in focus (and cogency), but, take together, adequately convey the argument that the rel’eVance of measuring academic libraries by the sizes of.theif collections, staffs, and budgets has been severely diminished by contemporary circumstances. This view coalesces in a provocative piece by Ralph A. Wolff of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which calls for libraries to develop a “culture of inquiry, data collection, and analysis” that measures “the impact of the library on the lives of students, faculty, and other patrons.”
November 1995
499
498
The Journal
of Academic
Librarianship
furniture.-Dennis W. Dickinson, College Librarian, College, 731 College St., Beloit, WI 53511-5509.
Beloit
Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte. New York: Kuopf, 1995. 243~. $23.00. ISBN O-679-439 19-6. LC 94-4597 1. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, by Clifford Stoll. New York: Doubleday, 1995. 247~. $22.00. ISBN O-385-41993-7. LC 95-2537. Two experts on electronic technology and the information highway take rather different positions on how our futures, especially the ways that we work, read, and interact, will be influenced by living in a digitized society. “Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living,” claims Negroponte, who is Director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). As a member of the MIT faculty since 1968, he has firsthand knowledge about the development of many electronic products. His view of the changes can be summarized in one sentence: “The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable” (p. 4). He characterizes bits as the DNA of information and claims that the information superhighway is the global movement of weightless bits traveling at the speed of light. Books and journals, by contrast, are composed of atoms. His thesis is that the atoms carried in those containers will be replaced by bits which are weightless and can travel at the speed of light. Negroponte envisions computers capable of recognizing their “masters,” learning their individual needs, understanding their verbal commands and sensing their nonverbal presence. Indeed, voice activated computers, albeit primitive versions, are already on the market. He predicts that agents, sometimes called knowbots, will screen out unwanted messages from e-mail and listservs, and that household appliances will have the ability to respond automatically to changing circumstances. And, of course, books as such will be unnecessary because “multimedia someday will be as subtle and rich as the feel of paper and smell of leather” (p. 71). Stoll has strong reservations about the benefits of computer networks. Networks, he maintains, “isolate us from one another and cheapen the meaning of actual experience. They work against literacy and creativity. They will undercut schools and libraries” (p. 3). Stoll is no computerphobe; he tracked and caught a spy ring operating on the Internet which sold information to the KGB, an experience that he describes in The CuckooS Egg (Doubleday, 1989). Stoll considers most predictions about the future wonders of the information highway as pure hype, especially those concerning electronic libraries. He says that the cost to digitizeeven by scanning-the millions of pages already in print is prohibitive. He cautions that rapidly changing technology will make many of today’s electronic sources obsolete because the parts to repair the equipment on which they run will be unavailable. (Remember 8-track tape?) The major difference between these two computer experts is the role that printed sources have played in their lives. Stoll admits that he frequents libraries and likes to read old magazines. However, he fears that librarians are sowing the seed of their own destruction by virtue of their fascination with the Internet. In his opinion, chasing ever changing technology costs money that could be better spent on books and magazines. Clearly, Stoll is a bibliophile. Just as clearly, Negroponte is not: the first sentence of his book is “Being dyslexic, I don’t like to
read” (p. 3). Only time will tell whose view will prevail.-Ellen Altman, School of Library and Information Science, Uni-
versity of Arizona, 1515 E. First St., ‘I&son, AZ 85219. Censorship of Expression in the 1980s: A Statistical Survey, by John B. Harer & Steven R. Harris. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994. 181~. $49.95. ISBN O313-28746-5. (Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications, No. 45). Referring to the 1980s as “the decade of the attack on Judy Blume,” Harer, head of circulation at Texas A&M University library, and Harris, humanities reference librarian at Louisiana State University library, have studied censorship challenges and complaints over a 1O-year period, 198 1- 1990, as reported in four different reporting sources-the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, the Attacks on the Freedom to Learn, Censorship News, and the Student Press Law Center Report. The book is not, as the authors acknowledge, a purely scientific study, but it does have the quality of evaluative quasidesign research. Ten questions were identified nine of which are similar to those investigated by Woods in A Decade of Censorship in America (Scarecrow Press, 1979). A tenth question sought to determine who the people were who stood up to the challenges. The study also differs from Woods’ in that it did not limit itself to educational institutions. Retail outlets, theaters, churches, radio stations, and the like were also included. While the period covered ( 198 1- 1990) overlaps with the other major compilation of censorship statistics, Burress’s Battle of the Books (Scarecrow Press, 1989), there are far fewer similarities in methodology, data analysis, and presentation of results. Harer and Harris found that the 1980s approximated the same level of censorship as that reported by Woods, and while some of the findings were comparable significant differences emerged. During the 1980s the most censored of all materials was Playboy magazine; the most censored book was Deenie by Judy Blume. Books remained the most challenged format, with the year 198 1 experiencing the greatest number of challenges. Censorship was the most prevalent in the farm-belt Midwestern states and the Pacific Northwest. High schools and high school librarians remained the main targets of attack, with bookstores and department stores being the most frequently targeted noneducational institutions. Parents continue to be the principal complainants, and sexual content still caused the most difficulty. A censorship challenge was more likely to result in banning or restricting access than the opposite. Teachers turned out to be the most likely advocates of banning or restricting. The ACLU was the most active national organization to which people could turn for help. Unlike such books, of which there are many, as Censorship and First Amendment Rights (American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, 1992), which offers advice on handling challenges, identifies national organizations concerned with combatting censorship, and suggests how to deal with lawyers, lobbyists, and public offtcials, Censorship ofExpression in the 1980s limits itself to reporting findings. The authors do not attempt the construction of operational propositions. The study represents an impressive demonstration of analytical techniques. The text is woven around 26 tables and 17 figures; bibliographical items, though few, are carefully selected. The index is fairly adequate. The really important chaptersthose in which the date are presented-are excellent.
One wishes, though, that some hard-boiled copy editor had go hold of the manuscript beforehand to eliminate large chunks of sometimes tedious methodological discussions, and curb the authors’ tendency to make statements and then go off on tangents. Certainly, though, any academic libraries concerned with intellectual freedom issues should own the volume. Just as Woods and Burress have become standards reference works, the present volume can confidently expect to have a similarly useful lifespan. Overall, its purpose has been achieved.-A.J.
Anderson, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115. The Challenge and Practice of Academic Accreditation: A Sourcebook for Library Administrators, edited by Edward D. Garten. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.285~. $65.00. ISBN O-313-28897-6. LC 94-2190 (The Greenwood Library Management Collection). This collection of essays and compilation of accreditation criteria serves a number of worthwhile purposes. It provides sound, dispassionate descriptions of the protocols and procedures of accreditation, and offers advice to librarians on how to engage the process rewardingly. Beyond this, it illuminates the context and nature of the controversies in which accreditation is currently enmeshed, provides spirited critiques of accreditation criteria and the manner in which they are applied, and reflects and describes the currently dominant paradigm of outcomes assessment with which the accreditation community is responding to its critics. Essays by Edward Garten, Susanne Frankie, and Joan Worley on the practicalities of the self-study and site visit are essential reading for librarians approaching accreditation for the first time. Even seasoned veterans are likely to find they offer rewarding insights and suggestions. Additional audiences for these fine, experience-based essays include members of the site-visitation teams and administrators-whether librarians or not-who steer their institutions’ preparations for accreditation. The book also offers a compiling of the criteria by which academic libraries are judged, not only by the regional accrediting bodies, but a host of professional and disciplinary associations as well. This is a formidable massing of succinct prose related to library assessment which can serve the library administrator in a number of applications, from preparing for approval by a particular organization to formulating internal assessment programs. Commentary and elucidating comparisons add value to the compilation. Alongside these practical features are essays which question the adequacy of accreditation methods in responding to today’s information technology and student demographics, and which illustrate the criticisms and self-doubts currently racking regional accreditation. These vary in focus (and cogency), but, take together, adequately convey the argument that the rel’eVance of measuring academic libraries by the sizes of.theif collections, staffs, and budgets has been severely diminished by contemporary circumstances. This view coalesces in a provocative piece by Ralph A. Wolff of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which calls for libraries to develop a “culture of inquiry, data collection, and analysis” that measures “the impact of the library on the lives of students, faculty, and other patrons.”
November 1995
499